Poll: Many in GOP doubt sea is rising

April 9, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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weather.0120.2mg.jpg - Photos by Michael Goulding / Orange County Register - A kayaker in Huntington Harbor gets a sea level view of the snow capped mountains on a mid January day that felt more like summer than the middle of winter.

weather.0120.2mg.jpg - Photos by Michael Goulding / Orange County Register - A kayaker in Huntington Harbor gets a sea level view of the snow capped mountains on a mid January day that felt more like summer than the middle of winter.

Hurricane Sandy’s massive flooding of New York in October sharpened attention on rising sea levels and the need for key coastal areas to prepare for the future.

But not everybody’s buying it.

A significant portion of Republicans are outliers, saying the sea level is not rising and looking particularly askance at plans to spend tax dollars on what they believe to be a myth.

That includes Senate Bill 461, pending in the state Legislature, which would allocate as much as $15 million to create a “coastal adaptation fund. And it includes Newport Beach’s consideration of flood-prevention systems to protect properties around Newport Harbor. Proposals in both arenas are driven by concerns with rising sea level.

Polling has shown Republicans as far more skeptical than Democrats that climate change is occurring (85 percent of Democrats said there is global warming while just 48 percent of Republicans agreed in an October poll by the Pew Research Center). Among those who say there is climate change, Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to attribute it to human activity.

A smaller survey of Orange County residents found that GOP skepticism carries over to scientific reports that sea level is rising. About half of the 155 Republican respondents believed the ocean was rising, while 34 percent said it wasn’t and 16 percent said they didn’t know, according to the OC Political Pulse survey.

Of the 100 Democratic respondents, 96 percent said sea level was rising and 4 percent said they didn’t know. Among Democrats, 65 percent said the rising level was primarily because of manmade climate change.

The Register’s Pulse polls track fairly well with more recognized surveys, although Pulse’s Republicans and Democrats tend to take more polarized positions. Because folks sign up to participate – rather than being called randomly – they tend to be more politically engaged and more partisan than the average American.

The facts?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency charts an 8-inch rise in sea level since 1880, using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. It says that there was little change in sea level for the 2,000 years before 1880.

“When averaged over all the world's oceans, absolute sea level increased at an average rate of 0.07 inches per year from 1880 to 2011,” says the EPA analysis. “From 1993 to 2011, however, average sea level rose at a rate of 0.11 to 0.13 inches per year – roughly twice as fast as the long-term trend.”

To better understand skeptics, I emailed about 30 Pulse poll participants who said they didn’t believe sea levels were rising.

“I believe that these scientists and organizations have an agenda and it colors their measurements,” wrote Anaheim business owner Kitty Thompson, 66. She had plenty of company, especially when it comes to wariness of the EPA.

“Government has a tendency to create problems that are so large, only government can solve them,” wrote San Clemente’s Phil Hoskins.

Suspicions don’t stop there.

“I believe that some university needed to justify its federal funding so it produced a politically correct report that promoted the idea of ‘global warming,’ ” said Brea’s Robert Lauten, 67.

Thompson and Lauten are among those who believe the Earth was created within the last 20,000 years.

“This planet was organized (formed) from existing material (age and size not revealed) within the last 20,000 years (by the Lord under the direction of God the Eternal Father, {Hebrews 1:2 KJV}),” wrote retiree Lauten, parentheses and all. Unlike others quoted here, Lauten is not a Republican but a member of the conservative American Independent Party.

“Mankind did not evolve from apes or swamp ooze. The tremendous heat from the Big Bang did not beget all life. The ‘Big Bang Theory’ is a television comedy with 4 nerd guys and one really ‘hot’ girl.”

But it’s not just creationists who doubt the sea is rising.

Hoskins is among skeptics who abide by prevailing scientific belief when it comes to the age of the Earth, which is about 4.4 billion years. The former Army meteorologist cited a scientific paper by Australian geologist Cliff Ollier, who gathered sea-level data he says shows there is no cause for alarm.

“There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise,” Ollier has written. “It is my opinion that there is no need for drastic measures."

Ollier is also among signatories to the Manhattan declaration on climate change, which states that “human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.”

Other Pulse respondents offered other evidence and analysis.

“If and when the sea rises, I’m sure man will be able to adapt,” wrote Mission Viejo’s Burl Estes, a retired deputy district attorney who included a graphic of sea levels over the past 1,000 years that conflicts with NOAA data. “But one benefit of warming is that more land will become farmable in the more northern climate regions, which is good news for an expanding world population.”

Ideology vs. fact

Last year, UC Irvine’s Peter Ditto told me that people decide to accept “facts” coming from those they trust, and complex issues are often decided by ideology rather than clear understanding of the matter.

"People come to their political beliefs through emotions, but they think they come them through facts," said Ditto, who specializes in social psychology. Ditto has a Ph.D. from Princeton but says that even he can't process the scientific information about global warming to make his own determination.

"It is not necessarily the case that education or knowledge makes you more objective," he said. "Liberals are biased in their direction and conservatives are biased in their direction. People find holes and problems in arguments where they look for them – and they look harder when the science offends or just upends their established beliefs."

I didn’t talk to Ditto about his politics, but he did say that he believes there is global warming and man contributes to it. Read my story about ideolody vs. facts, where Ditto's comments first appeared.

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